Autonomous Vehicles and Avoiding the Trolley (Dilemma): Vehicle Perception, Classification, and the Challenges of Framing Decision Ethics

Cunneen, Martin; Mullins, Martin; Murphy, Finbarr; Shannon, Darren; Furxhi, Irini; Ryan, Cian

doi:10.1080/01969722.2019.1660541

Cited by 41 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…While these debates are certainly very rich, we found this stream of the literature to be quite fragmented. For instance, there is still little consensus about the relevance of the trolley problem in the context of AVs (Bonnefon, Shariff, & Rahwan, 2019;Cunneen et al, 2020;Himmelreich, 2018;Keeling, 2020;Wolkenstein, 2018).…”

Section: Overview Of the Ethics Of Av Technology In Scientific Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical issues in focus by the autonomous vehicles industry

et al. 2021

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The onset of autonomous driving has provided fertile ground for discussions about ethics in recent years. These discussions are heavily documented in the scientific literature and have mainly revolved around extreme traffic situations depicted as moral dilemmas, i.e. situations in which the autonomous vehicle (AV) is required to make a difficult moral choice. Quite surprisingly, little is known about the ethical issues in focus by the AV industry. General claims have been made about the struggles of companies regarding the ethical issues of AVs but these lack proper substantiation. As private companies are highly influential on the development and acceptance of AV technologies, a meaningful debate about the ethics of AVs should take into account the ethical issues prioritised by industry. In order to assess the awareness and engagement of industry on the ethics of AVs, we inspected the narratives in the official business and technical reports of companies with an AV testing permit in California. The findings of our literature and industry review suggest that: (i) given the plethora of ethical issues addressed in the reports, autonomous driving companies seem to be aware of and engaged in the ethics of autonomous driving technology; (ii) scientific literature and industry reports prioritise safety and cybersecurity; (iii) scientific and industry communities agree that AVs will not eliminate the risk of accidents; (iv) scientific literature on AV technology ethics is dominated by discussions about the trolley problem; (v) moral dilemmas resembling trolley cases are not addressed in industry reports but there are nuanced allusions that unravel underlying concerns about these extreme traffic situations; (vi) autonomous driving companies have different approaches with respect to the authority of remote operators; and (vii) companies seem invested in a lowest liability risk design strategy relying on rules and regulations, expedite investigations, and crash/collision avoidance algorithms.

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Section: Overview Of the Ethics Of Av Technology In Scientific Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical issues in focus by the autonomous vehicles industry

et al. 2021

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“…For instance, the “moral machine” project ( MIT, n.d. ) frames autonomous vehicles’ decision-making using a modern trolly problem ( Foot, 1967 ): people decide how the car should choose “the lesser of two evils” (para. 2) rather than more technically and ethically realistic matters of machine perception, classification, and privacy ( Cunneen et al, 2020 ). Such moral (vs. technical) framings may result in misattributions of responsibility for errors (see Elish, 2019 ).…”

Section: Review Of Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Framing Effects on Judgments of Social Robots’ (Im)Moral Behaviors

Banks

Koban

2021

Front. Robot. AI

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Frames—discursive structures that make dimensions of a situation more or less salient—are understood to influence how people understand novel technologies. As technological agents are increasingly integrated into society, it becomes important to discover how native understandings (i.e., individual frames) of social robots are associated with how they are characterized by media, technology developers, and even the agents themselves (i.e., produced frames). Moreover, these individual and produced frames may influence the ways in which people see social robots as legitimate and trustworthy agents—especially in the face of (im)moral behavior. This three-study investigation begins to address this knowledge gap by 1) identifying individually held frames for explaining an android’s (im)moral behavior, and experimentally testing how produced frames prime judgments about an android’s morally ambiguous behavior in 2) mediated representations and 3) face-to-face exposures. Results indicate that people rely on discernible ground rules to explain social robot behaviors; these frames induced only limited effects on responsibility judgments of that robot’s morally ambiguous behavior. Evidence also suggests that technophobia-induced reactance may move people to reject a produced frame in favor of a divergent individual frame.

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“…The Independent Expert Report on Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles of the European Commission [Horizon 2020 Commission Expert Group (E03659) 2020] recommends, among others, the study of current traffic collision statistics, the results of which designers can use to reduce disproportionality in the rates of harm of road users depending on their road exposure. Other technological solutions on semi-autonomous driving include the adoption of advanced facial recognition systems to discern human beings and their behavior on the road and the promotion of Internet of Things allowing the communication among smart vehicles and the exchange of useful information on road traffic, notwithstanding the privacy and bias concerns that arise [Cunneen et al 2020]. Finally, a combination of neural networks, with benefits including "parallel computing, distributed information storage, fault tolerance, adaptive learning",and fuzzy logic, "a process of uncertain and nonlinear reasoning" similar to human reasoning, can be applied to solve the dilemma of the trolley problem [Li et al 2018].…”

Section: Final Remarks On Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%